Collators used for the purpose of assembling pages of written or printed material in numerically consecutive order have been in wide spread use for quite some time. However, many of such collators are expensive motor driven devices, which are often unsuitable for use in small offices due to their high cost and high productivity. Accordingly, there has been a growing need for an inexpensive, manually operated collator, and in recent years such collators have become available. Unfortunately, such manual collators usually suffer from operational deficiences, which render them inconvenient to use, such as the inability to properly guide and efficiently gather multiple sheets of paper as they are transported from the collator, and the inability to easily load the collator with stacks of paper due to the interfering position of the pusher means for transporting such paper.
In certain of the more expensive motor driven automatic collators found in the prior art means have been provided to guide the paper sheets as they are discharged, but it has been found that such means, which are usually in the form of plates or trays fixedly mounted to the exterior of the collator are not always suitable for use in the manual collators due to variations in the stiffness of the paper sheets and the speed at which such sheets are discharged. Similarly, means have also been provided in some automatic collators to raise the pusher means out of engagement with the top sheet of paper in each stack within the collator to facilitate the loading or reloading of additional sheets. However, such lifting means are usually automatically activated upon the reciprocating movement of the carriages used to carry the pusher means at the end of a paper transporting stroke, and as such are either inconvenient or too expensive for use in a manual collator.
Examples of motor driven collators having these features can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 3,269,721 to Taylor et al and U.S. Pat. No. 3,463,481 to Thomas et al and the patents cited therein. In those instances where the prior art teaches mechanisms for disengaging the pusher means independently of the reciprocable movement of such pusher means, such as in U.S. Pat. No. 3,664,656 to Ryland, it has also been found that such mechanisms are far too complex and expensive to be efficiently utilized in manual collators.